2 BULLETIN 1285, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
employment, best methods of obtaining and keeping a good class 
of laborers, opportunities for other employment during the dull 
season, and characteristics of farm laborers and their attitude 
toward farm life, and their ambitions for the future. 
This study was carried on in the truck-farming district of New 
Jersey in the summer of 1922 by a party of field workers. The 
investigators began work the last week of June, spending a week 
or ten days in each county visited, supplementing their canvass 
by mailing questionnaires to farmers in parts of the county not 
reached personally. The investigators visited farm operators and 
their hired workers in selected districts; along the routes traveled 
the attempt was made to visit every farmer hiring labor, whether 
or not he was strictly a truck farmer. 
Information was gathered and tabulated for general, truck, dairy, 
potato, and fruit (orchard) farms. Those farms considered as 
truck farms usually grew a variety of perishable crops throughout 
the season; the potato farms were truck farms specializing in po- 
tatoes. Because their numbers were too small to be representative, 
poultry and a few miscellaneous farms were tabulated with general 
farms, and small fruit or berry farms with fruit farms. All farms 
visited were carried on by farm operators and their families, except 
four which were corporation enterprises. 
The districts visited and the predominant types of agriculture 
in each (fig. 1) in the order visited were as follows: Gloucester 
County, truck farming, much of it for Philadelphia markets ; Salem 
County, truck and potato farming, together with some dairying: 
Cumberland County, truck and potato farming and orcharding: 
northwestern Atlantic County, truck, small fruit, and peach grow- 
ing; Bergen and Passaic Counties, truck farming for the markets 
of New York City and near-by northern New Jersey cities; Mon- 
mouth County, truck, especially potato farming. • 
TVhen the canvass was made in Gloucester County, early truck 
crops, especially tomatoes, were being gathered, and farm labor 
demand for the season was at its height. In Salem and Cumber- 
land Counties general farm and trucking work was not demanding 
labor so strongly, but in the latter county early apple picking was 
just beginning to call for additional workers. Around Hammon- 
ton, in Atlantic County, the early peach harvest was in full progress. 
In Bergen and Passaic Counties general midsummer truck-farm 
work and marketing were in full swing, employing probably the 
largest number of workers for the season. In Monmouth County 
potato digging was general. 
Two types of schedules were used in this study, one for employers 
of farm labor, the other for the employees. To tin 1 former. 375 
useful replies were obtained; to the latter. 683. Supplementary 
information was obtained from county agricultural agents. State 
agricultural and labor officials, employment office managers, and 
social welfare workers. 
AGRICULTURAL SEASONS AND EMPLOYMENT 
Only half of the farmers reporting hired help all the year. Xine- 
tenths of them hired at some time other than at harvest, and all 
hired in harvest time. The most common number of hired farm 
